Eating Paper
by InadaOnFire
Summary: It's the spring of 1923, and Jimmy was a delicate, combustible piece of paper in Thomas' magnified sunlight.


Jimmy stood in the fading sunlight of the boot room and traced a finger against the grain of the table, conscious of every little bump and flaw of the wood that caught at his skin. The mundaneness of the moment, the warm light from the rusting sun, and the touch that spelled the surety of his existence calmed him. For a few transient seconds he was able to forget the anxiety that hovered over him. However, the relief from his lately rampant emotions soon receded, and again he felt a rise in his chest, a push behind his eyes.

He dropped into a nearby chair and studied the dappled shadows of trees shifting across the wood's surface; their corporeal counterparts outside coaxed to life by a gentle breeze.

Letting out an immense sigh, Jimmy lay his heavy head down on the table. The surface was cool against the side of his face, whilst the sun gently caressed the exposed cheek with fingers of warmth that swam through the window panes. The contrasting sensations felt nice against his skin, comforting. How odd it was that he felt so serene in this very moment, but serenity did not abate the tears that started leaking from his eyes. They trickled across his face, over his nose and cheeks and, guided by the furrows of his skin, were brought to droplets that fell to the wooden tabletop, staining it darker.

Jimmy was homesick. He was loath to admit it, indeed he had, for a time, denied the word in his mind as a sickness long over come, and yet here he was wallowing in the affliction of a much younger boy. The homesickness was made all the more intolerable by its incurable nature. He could not visit someone or someplace to relieve his pain, for all that he pined for was gone.

Indeed, almost a decade had passed since that time of true carefreeness, and so much had changed. Jimmy himself had changed, but it had not been for the better because now his smiles stretched his face unnaturally, eyes that used to shine were drowned in blackness, and something grotesque festered in his chest. It was the most hideous feeling to be dissatisfied with yourself and to despise others for their happiness and success; feelings such as these could not be exorcised with ease and without proper attention they would stay forever as an irritant to the soul. Jimmy wanted to mend his temperament, to be sure, but he had no idea where to start, and it had been such a long time since an extended stint of happiness had held him he was afraid he wouldn't be able to recognize the sensation when and if it came back.

Jimmy closed his eyes and cast his mind back to the beginning of his service years, before everything had become so muddled. Those had been the idyllic years, bright and more saturated with color and experience than anything since.

Jimmy had been just a boy when, clutching the letter from the servants registry, he had arrived at the servants entrance of an enormous and frantic mansion to begin his life-no, it had been the beginning of existence, of survival, life had still not begun.

He remembered the first person he had met, a tall boy with large, clear blue eyes and an ever smiling mouth who had flung open the door and exclaimed jovially: "the new hall-boy! Gosh, you're a shrimpy one!" A statement that had Jimmy bristling and swearing straight off that he would hate this older boy, who had soon introduced himself as Denis, one of the footman. Except that wasn't how things had worked out in the end because after a few days they were inseparable. Jimmy had found that very few were sympathetic to a homesick hall-boy, and Denis was one of the few, cheering him up with card tricks and incredible stories of the upstairs inhabitants that he claimed were true but were surely fictions.

Soon years had passed and Denis's presence-his grinning, teasing smile, his dark and curly hair, with that signature wave to his fringe-became the most familiar thing in Jimmy's life. Jimmy had wanted to emulate Denis and after a few years, and much begging, Jimmy sported a coif to match. Jimmy hadn't known at the time why he had wanted to emulate Denis; although he did now because if he was being honest with himself it was the same reason that he now slicked his hair back and smoked cigarettes in the courtyard; love is the sincerest of mirrors.

Shortly after Denis' promotion to second footman the telegrams came. To think that paper could take someone away; certainly, in the year 1914 it could, and did, again and again until there wasn't enough paper left. He can still hear Denis's voice in his ear, "I'll be back before Christmas, don't you worry." And for Denis it had been over before Christmas; only instead of laughter and hands to great Jimmy, there was paper, endless amounts of paper. The words etched into that paper still scuttled around Jimmy's mind-". . . it is my painful duty to inform you that a report has this day been received from the War Office notifying the death of D. R. Blackburn. . . ." No, notifying the death of Denis.

Those words stuck in Jimmy's head and were a steady tap, tap, tap against his consciousness; they were the vile stuffs that churned his insides and clogged his throat with reticent sobs. Soon Jimmy, too, was called to war and the world melted from the heat of so many telegrams burning.

It was such that Jimmy hadn't the time to think the last nine years of his life. All was a rush of war, and when that ended Jimmy's heart didn't stop racing. He had spent too long living without hesitation, in fear of stopping altogether, that when the time came to slow he tripped.

His brothers in service were changed from their experience, and their meeting again at Lady Anstruther's was less a reunion and more a head count. Those who were alive would meet the eyes of the others and only see the holes that bullets had left. Holes that no amount of plaster could fill. Then, after three years of struggle and sluggish survival, Lady Anstruther announced the relocation to France. Jimmy was horrified with the very idea of living where Denis had died and he himself had suffered, and he gave notice without deliberation.

Staying in England was only a small comfort. The world kept burning, but this time it was not the flash of paper but the steady drip of wax. It burned the skin and sealed away the grief, but it did nothing to quell the anger that still crept into him day after day; he could feel it on his face and hear it in his voice. Downton rubbed at the wax, rubbed it off to his bones, and he could do nothing to stop it. Thomas, in particular, peeled the veneer away with his feeling, wanting-loving-hands. The hands eventually ceased, and the upheaval that followed ended with nought to show except for a curious absence on his neck. After a time, when the scabs had grown over, the smiles-oh, those delicious smiles-started: shared at breakfast, quickly drowned in tea and conversation; in the hallway as they tarried, though they ought to have rushed; surreptitiously thrown over the dinner table as they balanced trays laden with food.

No longer occupied by the fear and curiosity of Thomas' outright pursuit, and possessed of a bored and thus wandering mind, Jimmy's suppressed grief was surfacing at the most inopportune moment. The chance for discreet mourning under the guise of other deaths had passed; the family had moved out of mourning for Mr. Crawley and Lady Sybil, and, parallel to the first flowers of spring, hints of purple hovered in the periphery.

The forever companion of his grief was the memory of war, and he often found himself standing with eyes fixed to the far wall, shivers creeping over his skin as a sinking, consuming, sensation curved over him. It was like drowning in mud. However, the feeling of mud smothering him wasn't the incredible conjecture of a fraught mind; it was Jimmy's worst memory.

Jimmy crossed his arms and gripped his jacket. He could feel the ghostly sensation of being crushed into dirt, blood dripping into his mouth from an unseen source, and the half-heard shouts of men above him, around him, beneath him. Jimmy remembers wondering if he would die in the smash; they always said death in war was quick, so quick you wouldn't feel the pain, but perhaps he would die slowly in the suffocation of dead bodies and dirt. He remembered dearly hoping that Denis had died suddenly with a smile forever fastened by the ignorance of death. Jimmy screwed his eyes shut, willing away the memory.

He was crying uncontrollably now. No longer did the tears squeeze from his eyes passively but rather they were propelled by tremendous sobs that wracked his chest; the table repeatedly knocking against his ribs with each shuddered breath.

What was wrong with him?-he often wondered. He lashed out at others, played with Ivy's feelings, and made a fool of himself over trivial things-and now he found himself sobbing in the boot room. Jimmy wasn't quite sure where the erratic behaviour stemmed from. He was suffering from a belated grieving, to be sure, but it was also more than that. The certainty that he was alive had drained out of him: when he breathed the air was stale, food was paper in his mouth, and his every experience was coloured with inexplicable rage. He had to do the most outrageous acts to feel at all present on the earth, and he was afraid that if he stopped Jimmy Kent might just disappear. Sometimes he wished such a thing would occur.

The sun was setting in earnest now and the last blaze of light enveloped the boot room, searing it. The window panes and bottles of cleaning potions reflected the harsh beams into Jimmy's tear filled eyes, blinding him. It was beautiful-perhaps the only really beautiful thing left in the world-but the most beautiful and bright of things frequently only illuminate how cold and heavy the shadows are.

The sounds of approaching, and then pausing, footsteps alerted Jimmy to the presence of another. Embarrassed of his appearance-and not wanting to explain to anybody why he lay across the table crying when he should have been scouring the house for discarded crystal or standing ornamentally by a door-he sat up and angled himself away from the person, whoever it was, shoulders hunching. His hands found a discarded boot, and he fiddled with it, turning it over in his hands, inspecting the tiny wear marks.

But it wasn't anybody, it was Thomas. Of course it was. "Jimmy, are you alright?"

Jimmy took a moment to collect himself before voicing, experimentally and hoping without hitch, "yes, quite. I'm just, uh...busy at the moment, if you don't mind." However, he was unsuccessful. His voice had risen to a hysterical octave, and his excuse sounded empty and ridiculous to his own ears. "No, you're not," Thomas said quietly.

Jimmy didn't move and every muscle in his body tensed; his insides twisted. Although stillness was unlikely to prompt relief from scrutiny Jimmy still attempted to will away Thomas' presence with his momentary paralysis of body.

When the intense gaze did not leave his back, he said, his voice still watery, "close the door." No movement was heard, and the decisive click of the door's latch did not come.

Again, he pleaded, "please, Mr. Barrow, close the door." This time, Thomas heeded his words and the door was shut.

Jimmy sat for moment longer and then shuffled around in his chair to face Thomas. Thomas stood there flexing his left hand in agitation and squinting through the sunset at Jimmy. His face was in the exaggerated shadows of the waning sun, and his expression was inscrutable to Jimmy.

Jimmy coughed, or rather, spluttered and rubbed his eyes with the corner of his jacket sleeve, which he clutched over the heel of his hand. He studied the damp seeping through his cuff before glancing up again to Thomas. The table separating them was a gouging reminder of their distance; conversely, it stretched out before Jimmy surreally, and he thought it looked like a road leading directly to Thomas. How appropriate. Blinking rapidly a few times to shake that incredible image and to dispel the tears that gathered again on his lids, Jimmy murmured quietly "aren't you going to ask what's wrong with me?"

Thomas was silent for a few seconds before answering, "I wouldn't use those words," another pause, "because I doubt there's anything wrong with you." His voice was low and pensive, but the way he said 'wrong' left little room for interpretation as to what he meant.

Jimmy wanted to scream at him. With one word Thomas had revived afresh thoughts of his ill-found and lingering affections for Jimmy and, unbeknownst to Thomas, the hypocrisy that used to spill forth from Jimmy lips and the confusion and guilt that currently gripped him. Because Jimmy was wrong in a way that Thomas was incapable of being; or rather, in way that Thomas abhorred and refused to accommodate. Jimmy's personal creation of shame slid off Thomas just as oil slips over a silver spoon.

Jimmy didn't scream. "What words would you use, then?" Jimmy asked, once again fiddling with the boot in his lap.

"What's upset you?" Thomas said, stepping closer and placing a hand on the table top.

"Everything-um," a sob escaped him, and Jimmy sniffed, bringing his hand up to wipe again at his face. Thomas leaned forward and caught his wrist before it was sullied further in tears. He drew a handkerchief from his jacket and pressed it into Jimmy's hand.

Mumbling his thanks, Jimmy scrubbed at his face and blew his nose, all the while watching as Thomas made his way around the table, his fingers trailing over it as he walked.

He stopped next to Jimmy's chair, and at first Jimmy thought he might put a hand on his shoulder-something within Jimmy rose in anticipation-but he must have thought better of it and the movement was reduced to an aborted jerk.

He remained silent, so Jimmy continued, "everything feels wrong. Everything just-" Jimmy cast about for the right words, looking from Thomas' face, to his own hands that twisted in his lap, to the window, and back again to Thomas, whose face grew more concerned as the seconds passed.

"Everything is wrong," Jimmy pushed to his feet, letting the boot fall from his lap with a thump; the handkerchief drifted slowly after it. "Except this-no, you. I hate all of this," he waved a hand aimlessly around them, "and I hate all them upstairs, and down here too, for forgetting... They're just marching into modernity without a care for what came before, what we did. I don't mean service and country houses-that's all tosh-I mean the war. And maybe that's just selfishness because I can't forget, Thomas, and I wish they could feel my pain and just how stifling it is!" He dropped his head, and pressed his fingers to his forehead. Keeping his head down, he reached out a tentative hand to brush across the buttons of Thomas' jacket, and said in a whisper, "But I don't hate you; I like you-so much-and that's the problem." When he finished he glanced up to meet Thomas' eyes, which were filled with surprise, tortured hope, and a question. A question that Jimmy felt he must answer because he was sick of the complicated ambiguity surrounding their relationship. However, now that the words were on the tip of his tongue, the enormity of them held his voice. All he could offer Thomas was vigorous nodding and tears before he fell forward into Thomas' chest, arms sliding around his waist.

Jimmy mumbled apologies against Thomas shirt front, lips catching at the small buttons and tears blotching the pristine white. Apologies for the hurt, discomfort, and despondency that he had caused both of them, but substantially more to Thomas, the last few years. "I'm sorry I couldn't be brave like you, Thomas," Jimmy concluded, shuffling farther into Thomas and closing what little gap was left between them.

"It isn't-it wasn't alright, but I forgive you," Thomas said, letting his arms fall around Jimmy's shoulders. "And I understand, Jimmy. You must know that."

"I know."

In an effort to prolong the contact, and worried that Thomas might suggest, in a moment of rationality, that they end their embrace before some hapless colleague interrupted them, Jimmy requested, "please, can you just hold me for a while, Thomas."

"Yes, I can manage that," Thomas murmured, resting his cheek on Jimmy's flaxen hair.

The sun had left the observable sphere by now, and it's remote heat was replaced by the reassuring warmth of Thomas. A warmth that no longer held the threat of fiery consumption.


End file.
